Photographer Tod Brody is under pressure to answer for the use of this album cover photo.

A federal court judge in California has turned up the heat on Tod Brody, the elusive photographer at the center of a lawsuit over an image on the cover of Vampire Weekend’s 2009 2010 “Contra” album.

Brody allegedly licensed a Polaroid image of former model Ann Kirsten Kennis to Vampire Weekend and its record label for use on the album cover and in some concert promotions. Kennis sued the band, the label and Brody last July, alleging unauthorized use of her likeness. In response, Vampire Weekend and its record label counter-sued Brody in August. Any liability is his, the band says in that counter-claim, because Brody warranted that he had all the necessary rights to license the image.

But nobody has been able to find Brody in order to serve him with papers stating the claims against him. So the court has approved a joint request from Kennis, Vampire Weekend, and the band’s record label to serve papers on Brody via e-mail and the U.S. mail. (Normally, court papers have to be served in person.) The court approved the alternate delivery on November 18. Court records show that a summons was issued to Brody on November 24. The court says it will consider Brody in receipt of the papers 10 days from that date.

That sets Brody up for a default judgment if he doesn’t respond to the claims against him by early 2011.

According to the original claim filed last summer by Kennis, Brody charged Vampire Weekend a license fee of $5,000 for the image of Kennis. It is unclear how he obtained the image, which was shot more than 25 years ago. But Vampire Weekend says Brody had claimed in the license agreement that he shot the image.

Kennis, meanwhile, has said that the model release Brody presented to Vampire Weekend was forged. The band’s record label says it “reasonably” relied upon the signed release that Brody provided.

The band also says that Brody claimed that he had “good title and full right and authority” to license the image. Brody “misrepresented certain facts and breached contracts,” Vampire Weekend says in its claim against him. “Responsibility, if any, for damages claimed by [Kennis] rests entirely on Brody.”

Brody referred questions from PDN to his lawyer. That lawyer has so far not responded to a request yesterday afternoon for comment.

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“Thrush” tells the story of a relationship through a series of still photos (in just 4 minutes). It was recently honored in the first Vimeo Awards.

Pretty much as we expected, reports last week that claimed Kuwait was planning on banning the use of digital SLRs by non-professionals turned out to be highly, highly exaggerated, as in completely false.  The paper that started the hubbub, the Kuwait Times, issued the following retraction over the weekend.

“On Saturday, November 20, 2010 the Kuwait Times published an article titled ‘Multi ministry camera ban frustrates artists’ in which incorrect information was provided. The newspaper regrets failing to verify the information. The article wrongly stated that a ban on DSLR cameras was implemented by the Ministries of Information, Social Affairs and Finance. This information is false. In a follow up investigation, it was proved that no such ban has been issued. We regret this error and deeply apologize for any inconvenience caused.”

Yes, this was again a case of a crazy Internet meme getting ahead of any actual reporting/facts.

BTW, did you hear the one about how airport body scanners can gather your DNA so the U.S. government can secretly track you? Holy macaroni!

"Charity, Bournemouth" 2008; ©Paul Russell

Yesterday, we told you about the street photographer who was questioned by police after taking photos in Times Square and many of you weighed in with your commentary. And while being a street photographer in New York City may not be easy for various reasons, it doesn’t compare to Great Britain where it can be downright criminal thanks to that country’s strict anti-terrorism laws.

According to Wired.com’s RAW File blog, that’s changing with a recent amendment to Britain’s “Prevention of Terrorism Act” which had declared photographers “suspicious” merely for carrying photo gear. (And you thought things were bad in Kuwait.)

The “suspicious” photographer law was amended this past summer and, somewhat coincidentally, a new book is out from Thames & Hudson (get it: London and New York) entitled “Street Photography Now.”

The book is a compendium of famous and lesser known street shots from a range of photographers, including Martin Parr, Joel Meyerowitz, Trent Parke, Michael Wolf, Bruce Gilden, Matt Stuart, Nick Turpin, Alex Webb and many others. Check out the video slideshow from the book below.

(Via RAW File.)

Street Photography Now from Third Floor Gallery on Vimeo.

Resnick was questioned by a police officer moments after he took this photo. ©Mason Resnick

Mason Resnick, a photographer and editor of the Adorama Learning Center, was shooting in New York City’s Times Square yesterday when he felt a tug on his camera strap. His first thought was that someone was trying to steal his camera. When he looked up though he saw the stern face of a New York City police officer staring back at him.

“What are you doing?” the officer grilled him.

When Resnick explained he was a street photographer who was capturing candids of people in Times Square, the officer pressed him by saying he had received “several complaints” about Resnick.

“I was following you for several blocks,” the officer said. “There are a lot of school groups here today, lots of children.”

Resnick was nonplussed.

“That inference was pretty clear,” Resnick wrote in his blog for Adorama. “I was being not so subtly being accused of being a pedophile.”

Resnick was able to able to quell the situation by showing the officer the images he had shot — even though he was no way legally obligated to do so. In the end, Resnick, who was testing the Leica X1 and D-Lux 5 digital cameras for Adorama as part of a Street Photography Stress Test, decided that arguing further was not worth it.

“Even though I know I have the legal right to take pictures in public places (this has been challenged many times in U.S., Canadian, and UK courts and in every case, the photographer’s rights have been affirmed), I also advise my students that when an officer tells you to stop taking pictures, you stop, and don’t argue Why? Because he is armed, and has the power to arrest you—and he may not be well-versed in the rights of photographers.”

What do you think of how Resnick handled the situation? How would you have handled it? Have you noticed more harassment from police officers for taking photos in public places lately?

(Read more about Resnick’s experience in Times Square here.)

Kate Middleton and Prince William

Prince William, second in line to the British throne, has announced a “zero tolerance” policy toward the paparazzi in the wake of his engagement last week. The prince says he will take legal action against photographers who invade his privacy or that of his fiance, Kate Middleton, The Telegraph reported today.

“A single photograph of Prince William and Miss Middleton sharing a tender moment together could earn a photographer tens of thousands of pounds [in fines]” the newspaper reports

A royal aid has told the press that the prince won’t tolerate any pursuits, or the use of telephoto lenses from public property to capture photographs of the royals “in private situations.”

The newspaper explains, “Prince William blames the paparazzi for the death of his mother in a Paris car crash more than 13 years ago and he is determined that his future wife will not have to tolerate similar intrusions and dangers.”

While the paparazzi may be guilty of selling their souls and driving celebrities crazy, the prince seems to have forgotten that a drunk limousine driver–not photographers–caused the death of Princess Diana in 1997. The photographers were exonerated by French courts in 2002.

In merry England, however, there’s no First Amendment to protect journalists from royal edict, and newspaper editors have been put on notice to toe the line with a formal letter from the palace.

Dovima with elephants, evening dress by Dior, Cirque d'Hiver, Paris, August 1955. Photograph by Richard Avedon © The Richard Avedon Foundation.

One of Richard Avedon’s fashion photographs fetched nearly $1.2 million at auction on Saturday, a record for the photographer. The image, of the model Dovima with a pair of elephants at a Paris circus, was one of 65 Avedon works sold at Christie’s in Paris in an auction to raise money for The Avedon Foundation.

The auction also included a four-portrait portfolio of images of the Beatles ($609,547); a triptych of Andy Warhol and some of his associates ($412,301); a portrait of Marilyn Monroe ($231,491); and a racy image of model Stephanie Seymour ($362,989).

Along with other fashion images, prints of photographs from Avedon’s “In the American West” were also sold, as were portraits of Malcolm X, Pablo Picasso, Marcel Duchamp, Samuel Becket, Natasssja Kinski, and a young Lew Alcindor, who later changed his name to Kareem Abdul-Jabbar.

The auction earned a total of $7,495,600, selling 100 percent of the lots at prices that met or exceeded estimates.

The Avedon Foundation was established after Richard Avedon died in 2004. The foundation encourages the study and appreciation of Avedon’s work through exhibitions, education, publishing and other activities.

The Open Society Documentary Photography Project yesterday announced the winners of this year’s Audience Engagement Grants. Founded in 2005 with the name “the Distribution Grant,” the grant seeks to engage communities and decision makers in human rights and social justice issues. Each year, five to eight grants ranging from $5,000 to $30,000 are awarded to photographers who have partnered with individuals or organizations to disseminate their finished photography projects to the public.

This year,  eight grantees were selected:

Andrew Agaba will partner with Africa Leadership Institute (www.aflia.org) on KALISOLISO: The People are Watching, a newspaper supplement, poster campaign, touring exhibition, and blog designed to prevent pre- and post-election violence in Uganda in the February 2011 general elections.

Alit Ambara will partner with Institut Sejarah Sosial Indonesia (ISSI) to present photographs of the victims of the 1965–66 violence in an interactive, multimedia teaching module to be used in Indonesian high school history classes.

Donna De Cesare will partner with Universidad Centroamericana in San Salvador and the The Mesoamerica Center in Antiqua, Guatemala, to combine photography, theater, and skills-based media workshops for youth to address the complex ways that gang violence and migration impact the human rights of young people in Central America.

Kunda Dixit will partner with Madan Puraskar Pustakalaya, the principal archive of books in the Nepali language, to produce Shanti Sangralaya, an educational curriculum and permanent exhibition of photographs, texts, maps, and graphics about the 1996–2006 insurgency in Nepal.

Stephen Ferry will partner with Consejo de Redación in Bogota to create Violentología: Un manual del conflicto colombiano, a visual resource that will be distributed to journalists, editors, and archivists to to instruct and encourage the photographic coverage of Colombia’s human rights crisis.

FIERCE, a membership-based organization in New York City, will partner with Marvin Taylor on Queer Pier: 40 Years, an exhibition and community archiving project that will serve as a tool for FIERCE’s ongoing grassroots organizing and leadership development programs for LGBTQ youth of color in New York City.

Lorena Ros will partner with La Fundación Vicki Bernadet in Barcelona to use Unspoken—a book and multimedia project on adult survivors of child sexual abuse—to create an experiential workshop designed to raise awareness and reach out to women survivors in the Spanish prison system.

Jean-Marie Simon will partner with Oficina de Derechos Humanos del Arzobispado de Guatemala and Estudio A2 (www.a2foto.com) to create a newspaper supplement and a multi-lingual DVD based on her book Guatemala: Eternal Spring, Eternal Tyranny, which documents the height of Guatemala’s civil war in the 1980s.

Information on the grants and application guidelines can be found on the Soros Foundation web site.

UK agency Panos Pictures has put out a call for portfolios from social documentary photographers interested in joining the agency. The deadline is March 1, 2011.

Although Panos lists more than 100 photographers on its roster, director Adrian Evans says a number of them are inactive. That has left gaps in the agency’s coverage. Evans says the agency is looking for photographers from Asia, Latin America, the Middle East, and Arica. “We’re also very interested in photographers applying from the States,” he says.

It may seem odd that a picture agency is soliciting photographers at a time when so many are begging for representation, and demand for documentary stories is so weak. Evans explains that Panos is simply trying a new system for portfolio reviews. Currently, the agency averages about six unsolicited submissions per day. But the agency staff doesn’t have enough time to review them all.

So Panos is switching to a once-a-year open call for portfolios instead. “We can look at the submissions in a far more transparent way. Photographers will know when to apply, and we will have the time and energy to focus on their submissions,” Evans says.

He anticipates accepting only three or four new photographers for representation, and perhaps none at all. The decision will be announced at the end of April.

Evans says Panos is looking for photographers with great ideas, an ability to create compelling narratives, and an ability to interpret the world, not just illustrate it. “We’re not a wire agency,” he says. Click here for more details about the agency’s selection criteria.

For information about how to submit a portfolio, visit  www.panos.co.uk/submissions/ .

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Tom Lowe created this video on a Canon 5D Mark II in California’s White Mountains and Yosemite National Park.